Talk:SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Consensus that the current title is still the WP:COMMONNAME. (closed by non-admin page mover) {{GearsDatapacks|talk|contribs}} 12:16, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University → Downstate Health Science University – WP:CONCISE and WP:PRECISE, SUNY has been dropped from name per branding guide and website landing page. Rublamb (talk) 18:36, 12 April 2026 (UTC) — Relisting. TarnishedPath^talk 07:12, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Oppose: While the proposed title is more CONCISE and adequately PRECISE, it is only so by five characters and some variation of SUNY Downstate has been the COMMONNAME of the school for decades, making the current title both more recognizable and natural. The SUNY prefix persists in usage since the renaming of the school in 2019. A Google site:nytimes.com search for "Downstate Health Sciences Center -SUNY" yields only three results, each of which spell out "State University..." The variant of the WP:OFFICIALNAME used by the school and their branding guide is not relevant to WP article policy, and the website copy also uses both SUNY Downstate and SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University. It's been six years, which is plenty of time for uptake by independent sources. —BrechtBro (talk) 19:21, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

Dropping "SUNY" is consistent with the ongoing series of name changes made to the SUNY system and with changes to article names. Because this is a relatively new variant of the 2019 name change, it makes sense that inconsistency exists. For the benefit of this discussion, here is the history of the institution's names (now corrected to reflect sourced content in the article):

• Long Island College of Medicine (1860–1950)
• SUNY College of Medicine at New York City (1950–1960)
• Downstate Medical Center (1960–1986)
• SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn (1986–2019)
• SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University (2019–)

Note that this is not the first time the institution dropped SUNY from its name and that "SUNY Downstate" was not used from 1954 to 2019, meaning it was not the common name for 65 years, vs. the return to "SUNY Downstate" in the past six years. Rublamb (talk) 19:39, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

This list is not accurate, I've corrected it on the page. Among other things, Downstate Medical Center was in official usage alongside Health Science Center,, something I think can be dated to 2000, per Middlestates, but is also born out in usage (not of the both names, but either one). This is confusing, especially since there was the merge from the College of Medicine (a school of the university, not the university itself), as well as the hospitals involved. But that aside: SUNY Downstate has been the COMMONNAME for decades, since at least the 90s. Here's the New York Times in 2008: "...and another at the State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn, known as SUNY Downstate" . Or 1998. Or 2001: "University Hospital, the teaching hospital for the State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn, known as SUNY Downstate...". Which is probably why the institution had the awkward name of

This is a great case study in COMMONNAME vs OFFICIALNAME: basically no one ever stopped using "Downstate Medical Center" to the point where they put it back into the awkward name of "Health Science Center at Brooklyn, Downstate Medical Center" (SUNY copy has it both with a comma and hyphenated). Health Science Center at Brooklyn does get some usage from 1986 through the mid 2000s in the NYT, but Downstate Medical Center persists through that whole period, I digress. I would offer tentative weak support for an alt rename to SUNY Downstate, per COMMONNAME and CONCISE if others think it's appropriate, but it is not especially precise. —BrechtBro (talk) 02:41, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

I will look at what you have found. My list is from two different university sources, including its official history. Since this is a list of official historic institutional names, the university is a reliable source. Note that the institution says that "Downstate Medical Center" was a nickname, not a formally adopted name. I both agree that "SUNY Downstate" is also a nickname. As such, neither should be included in the list of official names in the infobox. Thus, I have updated the above list and the infobox to include only official names. This is separate from the common name/article name issue. My one thought here is that former common names usually become redirects when the institutional name changes. Rublamb (talk) 02:55, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

Well, the source for "SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn – Downstate Medical Center" is the same official announcement, and I'd add that institutional sources are not always correct in telling their own history, especially of things that have passed out of working institutional memory (there are limits to WP:ABOUTSELF). But this speaks to two layers of official names here: one is branding used by the university, the other is the legal name given to the university by the SUNY Board of Trustees. The two are not always the same, but they are both institutional names. I think "nickname" only makes sense in the specific context of parsing out that difference.

Re: "Downstate Medical Center": In 1950, it was being called "the downstate medical center of the university."

In 1953, capitalization has shown up, "Downstate Medical Center" referring both to the school and the new building , and by 55 its become common. Here's a more official usage of it in an announcement from 56, and 57. "State University Medical Center" gets overtaken in usage around 55, and it appears in a college announcement from January 54. —BrechtBro (talk) 03:53, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

I think you are going off topic, which is what to call this article based on today's official and common names. Rublamb (talk) 04:05, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

Well, yes, it is off-topic and so is much of the comment it is responding to. If you want to move it to a new thread, that's fine by me. —BrechtBro (talk) 04:08, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

The answer is detailed in this document. I was right the first time, listing that the nickname became a name. Rublamb (talk) 04:25, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

Comment: There is no overriding COMMONNAME, nor is there consistent branding either for Upstate or Downstate. It is borderline OR to trawl through purportedly representative sourcing and determine X name (used in 8 selected sources) is more common than Y (used in 5 selected sources). It gets equally complex when a local source has their own style guides or considerations and conflict with itself. Yes, of course when there is an overriding answer, that's one thing. But right now, it takes two seconds to find official branding (or secondary source usage) as either SUNY Downstate [...] or as just Downstate[...], in both and the above merge discussion makes clear that there is ambiguity for Downstate's name.

This ambiguity over the name is also the case with Upstate, which leads me to my view on this RM. Both Upstate and Downstate are branded the same way here (without the SUNY), on the official SUNY site. Ditto for a basic Google either way, which shows that each are also commonly referred to as SUNY Downstate/Upstate. They are also referred to similarly, but inconsistently in reliable sources. With this ambiguity, I strongly feel that WP: Consistent is a guide. They are parallel institutions. In the absence of a common name (and the confusing, often conflicting (this 2022 guidance from SUNY lists SUNY Downstate as an acceptable shorthand, but not SUNY Upstate, but this SUNY page calls it SUNY Upstate in the very first sentence (ditto with other Upstate sources, including its website name, YouTube page, LinkedIn page, and union (UUP) page, all from first or second page of Googling (and USNWR, Niche, et al) guidances from the organization(s)), my argument is for deciding which name structure both should go by and keep it WP: Consistent. If its Downstate and Upstate (per the SUNY website/their logos), then great. If it's SUNY Upstate and SUNY Downstate per their usage (and to reduce ambiguity), great. If it's both spelled out (to make clear what the acronym stands for), also great.

There is no decisive argument, besides relying only on OfficialName/legal name (which is iffy imo) for one name or the other. Both versions would be equally as acceptable and would be less confusing for readers if we kept them structured the same way. Dizzycheekchewer (talk) 05:07, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

I agree with consistency for both, if that is the common name for both. In this case, that appears to the case. I have not dug into the history of Upstate, but know that the Downstate name originated with a marketing tagline that became so popular that the institutional name was changed to Downstate (no SUNY). The attempt to return to a SUNY name that dropped Downstate failed due to the strength of the common name, resulting in the return to Downstate (the current name). Thus, we have confirmed that Downstate (without SUNY) has been the common name for some time.

If we retain SUNY in this article's name, I question why it is abbreviated based on WP:CONSISTENT. Having reviewed the articles covered by List of State University of New York units, the only articles with "SUNY" in their titles rather than "State University of New York" are institutions with recent name changes to include "SUNY" that have never used the spelled out name. All of the other institutions have article titles that spell out "State University of New York".

Thus, the decision here should be whether to move the article to "Downstate Health Sciences Unviersity" or to "State University of New York Downstate Health Sciences University". I agree with you that both versions would be equally acceptable. However, given the common names for both Update and Downstate, dropping SUNY makes more sense than increasing the length of the article titles based on WP:CONCISE. Rublamb (talk) 14:49, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

It is borderline OR to trawl through purportedly representative sourcing and determine X name (used in 8 selected sources) is more common than Y (used in 5 selected sources) OR is a content guideline for articles, determining the prevalance of usage in reliable sources is not only appropriate, it is required by WP:COMMONNAME. The NYC papers (NYT, Daily News, Post); the Brooklyn Eagle, even NPR, all show a preference for having "SUNY" before Downstate Health Sciences University. I can't find evidence of a single independent source preferring just Downstate Health Sciences University, the closest I've found is Gothamist, which uses it with SUNY once and once without, and who have many other instances of SUNY Downstate, often referring to other subsidiary bodies, the hospital, the College of Nursing.

It's also very possible that SUNY Downstate Medical Center is the COMMONNAME, judging by how little usage there is in the press of "Downstate Health Sciences" —BrechtBro (talk) 15:03, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

There is a level of discernment required in COMMONNAME, but the practice you've used in this and other RM discussions shows a concerning yada-yada approach to alternative name usage (i.e. the Upstate RM request where you cited 2 mentions in your preferred form at the NYTimes and it took very little time to find my own 4 mentions in the alternate form, in the same source). It doesn't work if you take a look, catalog some usage of one name and then don't properly consider the alternatives/contrary examples. If you don't do it holistically then it gives us a slanted picture. Really the answer here and with some other SUNYs is much murkier, therefore requiring more consideration of a meetable standard than competing stats. Both versions and the longform are properly common and used.

The issue is not the reference to sources, it's the haphazard and incomplete results. For instance, in the Upstate RM discussion you used an ngram (here's a properly set version) to argue (alternatively to your argument here) that Upstate is good but SUNY Upstate is bad. But you don't mention the same metric here, even though it contradicts your argument here. We can assume it's an oversight (or maybe the ngram is useless as a metric in both cases), but that's the kind of haphazardness I'm talking about here. Dizzycheekchewer (talk) 17:46, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

For a more comprehensive search of newspapers, I looked for the current and former names in Newspapers.com (which includes the newspapers listed above but has a more robust search engine). The results were:

• "suny downstate medical center" = 3,519 hits
• "downstate medical center" = 42,833 hits (46,272 minuse 3,519)
• "suny downstate health science university" = 85 hits
• "downstate health science university" = 73 hits (158 minus 85)

Although I advise against just using newspapers (AP Stylebook says to use the shortest recognizable name, which is not always the common name), "Downstate" has a clear historic lead over "SUNY" in newspapers. The modern name is pretty much a tie, although some of the SUNY name came from a multi-run ad. Rublamb (talk) 19:36, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

@BrechtBro: In your last sentence, I think you meant "It's also very possible that SUNY Downstate Health Science University is the common name", rather than "SUNY Downstate Medical Center". The latter is the institution's former name. Rublamb (talk) 21:23, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

@Rublamb No, I meant what I wrote. But if it makes sense to restore two separate articles for the university vs the medical center, I think the newspapers.com results confirm my argument that "Downstate Health Sciences U" is not commonname. An issue with searching all of newspapers.com is that there are so many old results, they don't tell us much about what's in use today without filtering by year. it's also a bit of apples and oranges, and again, there's the question of the hospital vs the school and the overlap between them, as well as the usage of just "SUNY Downstate" —BrechtBro (talk) 00:05, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Since Downstate Health Science University is a newish name, the only hits for it and its SUNY variation are from newer articles. Thus, there is no issue in using this data. Because the name with and without the "SUNY" prefix received around the same number of hits (many of the "SUNY" hit were being ads rather than articles), there is not support either way for the two article titles under discussion. However, the Newspaper.com data does indicate that "Downstate" without the "SUNY" prefix has been the prefered name for a long time. It appears that the new name for the university and the hospital (University Hosptial at Downstate) was, in part, an effort to seperate the two entities. Rublamb (talk) 00:41, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Oppose per BrechtBro. Cfls (talk) 16:59, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Medicine/Society and medicine task force, WikiProject Higher education, WikiProject Medicine, and WikiProject New York City have been notified of this discussion. TarnishedPath^talk 07:13, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

oppose per BrechtBro --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:30, 25 April 2026 (UTC)